Instead of Bridgegate, Escondido is getting a strong whiff of Fecalgate, suspected payback akin to the "traffic study" on the George Washington Bridge.

What’s missing is an email saying, "Time for some breathing problems around ‘Dido CC."

Here’s what we can fairly say about Fecalgate:

• A Valley Center egg ranch under contract with Stuck in the Rough LLC, the presciently named company that owns the former Escondido Country Club, poured truckloads of clumpy chicken manure on dry fairways. Residents in the corner of northwest Escondido gagged.

• The fouled fairways stank so bad the county Air Pollution Control District is citing Stuck in the Rough. Penalties could reach $10,000 a day or higher, depending on intention.

Was it an unwitting goof or was it a New Jersey-style strong-arm message that would draw admiration from Tony Soprano?

• The company’s opaque statements — the manure spreading was "industry-standard," is being cleaned up and "less odorous fertilizer" will be used in future — don’t address the basic question: Why was the raw manure unloaded on unwatered fairways? (Was it an "odor study"?)

• Michael Schlesinger, owner of Stuck in the Rough, has exposed himself to the bizarre suspicion that he — or those working for him — punished a community that has resisted his desire to build houses on the course he bought a year ago.

• Schlesinger, framing himself as a victim, has filed a lawsuit against the city, which voted last year to preserve his ghost golf course as open space. Schlesinger alleges an illegal taking of his property. He is also gathering signatures for an initiative that would allow him to build up to 430 homes.In the past, he’s paid for ads and robocalls predicting municipal bankruptcy if he’s blocked from building.

Could he have ordered the dropping of stink bombs to remind the residents of who’s the boss?

Common sense says, Nah, that’s way too rich. Vladimir Putin might be so brazen a bully, but a businessman who wants to shape public opinion in his favor?

But the thing is, there’s no other explanation that makes any rational sense.